Meet the Artist: Alicia Hall Moran

Last night (its Tuesday, November 22) I went to Meet the Artist at the Macaulay building. The artist performing that night was Alicia Hall Moran. When I RSVP’d I saw that she was a musician/composer so I expected some musical performance.

I arrived ten minutes late because I miscalculated the time it would take to get to the building. I walked in to a room with a stage and Mrs. Moran was standing on it with another fellow holding a guitar. She talked, for around 10 minutes, about the influence Motown music had on her style of music. She then told us she was going to perform a mash up of a Motown and opera. I’m kind of familiar with Motown but I don’t know much about opera so I was expecting a Motown sound.

Mrs. Moran started to perform and the first thing that came out of her mouth was a very high pitched note that you would usually hear in an opera. Since I was expecting Motown, I was extremely surprised but interested at the same time. (I found out later that in the ten minutes I missed, Mrs. Moran explained that she sings opera with Motown lyrics and feel so I shouldn’t have been surprised at all).

This mash up was a very unusual sound to me. It at first intrigued me but then, after realizing I’m not a big fan of opera or Motown, I started to get bored of the music. Nothing against her, its just that I don’t particularly like that genre of music.

I did, however, enjoy the guitarist and flutist (Yes she brought someone who can play the flute with her) performances very much.

After she finished the song she talked for a little while about performing, choosing a career, and life in general. She performed another song she composed (Motown-opera mash up) and talked for a little more. She closed with one last song and offered us some tickets to her show tonight (which from what I understood  she was an understudy).

It was an interesting night which I learned another genre of music and some music history.